A Fit of Pique: Vexation, Umbrage, and Discontent
by Atlin Merrick
Summary: They are little girls, all three. They started as a joke between John and Sherlock, a tease, a taunt, a fit of pique while they argued about empathy and erections. But over the years Vexation, Umbrage, and Discontent grew, like children always do...
1. A Fit of Pique

**A Fit of Pique: The Story of Vexation, Umbrage, and Discontent**

They are little girls, all three. And each can fill a room. They are Holmes-Watsons. Of course they can.

All are the same age, which is eight. Eight, as it turns out, is old enough to be entirely smarter than necessary, and still young enough that you don't quite know what to do with all those brains.

Eight is old enough to be good, too young yet to be great.

Eight is more than enough to show the world that you are _so_ like your papa as to be a warm, brave, chip off his sandy-haired block.

It is also old enough to manifest the quirks of your dark-haired daddy, eccentricities you sometimes seem to wear like a badge.

And finally, eight is old enough to display characteristics so profoundly out of left field that both of your parents will look at each other some days and shrug, saying "It wasn't _me_ who taught her that," and they'll each be right.

Which is to say, Vexation, Umbrage, and Discontent are their fathers' children—and they are entirely their own people.

Vex with her beloved spiders and giggles and lisp, Um with her birthday cards and sweet coffee and crucifixes, Dis with her sneezes and skull and strongly held convictions.

They are the children of John Watson and Sherlock Holmes, these three, and already they are greater than the sum of their parts.

…

The girls.

They started as a joke between John and Sherlock one morning, a tease, a taunt, a fit of pique while they argued about empathy and erections. But over the years the girls grew, like children always do.

Sherlock yelled across the flat for John last week—the good doctor has never much cared for that, especially at six bloody a.m.—and John hollered back that _that_ is exactly where Vexation learned the awful, awful habit.

Mrs. Hudson took the skull again around Christmas, and when Sherlock complained, John explained that Rory was just upstairs because Discontent wanted to read to her.

John stubbed his toe on "another damned piece of that stupid experiment!" and Sherlock tamed his bad temper with a packet of Maltesers unearthed from somewhere in the flat, claiming he'd actually stolen them from under Umbrage's bed.

So yes, over the years, one silly jest at a time, John and Sherlock have invented the children they will probably never have.

Sherlock, being a completist, has even provided the science behind their small brood. Because seriously, in what universe can two men have babies together? In the universe where gene splicing is well advanced, of course.

Vex, Um, and Dis are fraternal triplets, Sherlock says. Each is blessed with twenty-two chromosomes from John, their papa, and twenty-two chromosomes from Sherlock, their daddy. And the final two X-chromosomes?

Though they didn't technically need an outside donor, let's just say Mycroft found a suitable one to help broaden the girls' gene pool. She is either a Rhodes scholar, Nobel laureate, or recipient of the Macarthur Genius Grant. Perhaps all three. Big brother gives no further details.

_I love comments possibly more than air. I'd be as happier than a giddy gay unicorn (wait. what?) if you felt inclined to leave a comment after each of the girls' chapter. Please?_

_P.S. The girls first appeared in _Empathy._ People liked them so I thought we might learn more about each. Now please allow me to begin the introductions._


	2. Vexation

**Vexation**

Vexation London Holmes-Watson is a mostly pale child, except for pink cheeks and ears, with bright blue eyes and a head full of short dark curls. She's quite long and angular—especially her face—and daddy says she's taller at eight than even he was at the same age.

Vexation is inclined toward reading and a certain degree of quiet, though she smiles all the time does Vex, and uses her raw-boned elbows to good effect, jabbing her sisters in the sides whenever one sets her to laughing.

And Vexation laughs. A lot. As a matter of fact that child can get into a fit of hysterics so loudly splendid it brings the rest of the family down with her. Needless to say everyone tries to make Vex laugh.

Umbrage also tries to make her lisp but, like daddy, Vex isn't particularly fond of this trait of hers and last year mostly managed to train the tendency away. Something papa says daddy still hasn't managed to do if provoked with the right circumstances. When Vex asked what those circumstances were, papa just giggled and would not elaborate, no matter how many times Vex asked (Vex, like pretty much everyone in that household, does not well tolerate unanswered questions. "Well too bad," says papa. Sometimes. About some things.).

Though Vex has tamed her lisp she's not yet licked—pun intended—her tendency to dart a quick tongue out over lips, just like papa does. As a matter of fact, she does this so often that he puts a fresh stick of lip balm in the pocket of her jeans pretty much every Monday.

Vexation likes tarantulas—just like papa did at her age—and has two, both of them seventeen years old. She likes to lie on her back and read while Spott and Fiddo are generally inert on her tummy. Sometimes one of them will move and Vex will observe the proceedings until the proceedings stop. Then she'll report what happened by yelling loudly across the flat.

It doesn't matter how many times she's admonished for the yelling, Vex forgets that "Yelling is for people unsure of their data." Every time he hears this papa just rolls his eyes and tells daddy that he's making shit up—"No swearing Vex!" "But you do it!"— because he's giddy that the girls actually believe every single thing he says.

Anyway, Vexation loves her spiders and has asked for a snake for her birthday, but daddy knows she made the request in a bid to seem a touch more eccentric than she is. A Holmes-Watson does enjoy being unique, after all.

So Vex does not have a snake, just two large cobalt blue tarantulas who seem to both be boys or both be girls and maybe gay which is really rather the point at 221B but no one quite knows and cares even less.

Anyway, right now Vex would like to get a greenbottle blue tarantula ("You have enough arachnids, my love.") and also to be a spider veterinarian and no matter how many times everyone else tells her such an occupation does not exist, her papa and her daddy tell her she can always invent the job and really why _shouldn't_ spiders have their own doctors anyway?

"Exactly," she says at the dinner table, a small saucer always to the right of her water glass, that saucer always busy with the doings of Spott (never Fiddo, who doesn't like the clink of cutlery), which mostly consists of her/him not doing very much at all except bearing the brunt of Discontent's diatribes but we'll get to that later.

For now just know that Vexation is quite her papa's little girl and some nights you can find the two of them in the stuffed chair, Vex curled against John's chest, her head beneath his chin, dark curls tickling his neck, lean bones constantly shifting, fidgeting, and the one word, "Why," punctuating each of John's pronouncements like a new kind of full stop.

Actually that right there is her favorite thing on earth—even more than Fiddo and Spott—cuddling with papa or curling up with daddy, asking questions, and then pressing her ear to their chests to listen to the rumbley answer. Yes, that's her favorite thing ever.

That and tickling Umbrage until she shriek-laughs so hard she almost has an asthma attack.


	3. Umbrage

**Umbrage**

Umbrage Hudson Holmes-Watson is taller than Vexation by a quarter of an inch and is pretty sure that she may grow as long as daddy, which would be very cool but isn't strictly necessary.

Um's dark, wavy hair usually hangs loose between her shoulder blades and is often snarled, but when daddy tells her to brush it—which she avoids at all costs if possible—she just looks at him with pretty grey eyes, and even though those eyes are like his, and her crooked, cupid's bow smile is his, and even though she speaks to him with the same measured tones he's employed since he could talk, well, despite all that, somehow this child of all three of their little girls is the most, the very most like John.

Not to say Um isn't every inch her own person because John will tell you right now that he _never_ not one time _ever_ spent an entire day teaching himself how to spit as far as possible, and he'll also tell you that he can't recall one instance where he drank three colas one right after the other just to see how long he could burp. And if he ever used the word bogey in _every_ sentence for one whole day because he liked to see how many times his daddy would roll his eyes and growl, "I despair," then John has blocked this.

So, yes, aside from an unseemly fascination (which developed just this last summer) with bodily processes, Umbrage is, indeed, quite a chip off the old upright block.

For example, if someone is going to mediate a fight in their raucous house—including between papa and daddy, even if they very much tell her it's none of her sweet business—it's going to be Umbrage. If someone's going to bring home a hurt bird or a homeless pup it'll be Umbrage. And if someone is going to stub her toe against the kitchen table for the third time this week ("Pick your feet _up_ darling.") and then break out a string of swear words shockingly inappropriate for an eight year old, it is going to be Umbrage.

Except, sometimes, lots of times, Um is nothing like her papa.

She recites poetry in the bath, for one thing. Why an eight year old is fascinated with poetry—and she is—when no one since Byron was a child has been so interested so young in this esoteric art neither John nor Sherlock can comprehend.

Um is partial to religious iconography as well, another mystifying trait neither papa or daddy can explain. Her interest manifests mostly in small pieces of jewelry, chiefly rings. At first Sherlock actually objected to her wearing of a crucifix, a pentacle, a fat, happy Buddha, a silly little rhinestone-bedecked angel. But once she explained the significance of each—in extensive, exhaustive detail—he withdrew his objections, which had been based only on the assumption she did not understand the meanings behind what she wore.

Of all the children she's the one who remembers. Birthdays, anniversaries, when library books are due. But it's more than that. Um remembers the last time you cried. She remembers the last time—it was two years ago—that you told her she's 'stupid' (Vex had not meant it). She remembers believing in heaven and then losing her kitten—it was _her_ kitten, daddy had got it just for her—to cancer of all things and then not believing in much of anything any more.

Um smiles as much as any child, is as happy as any child, but she's also the only child of the three inclined to fits of melancholy, inclined toward melodramatic over-reactions to small stimuli, and the only one in the family to wake up so grumpy some days she just about qualifies as a biohazard.

Fortunately Um's blues are still somewhat rare, though her parents are careful to pay close attention, trying to be sure those fits of despair are getting no more frequent. And fortunately her moods can be lifted quite easily with the judicious application of toffee pudding, Maltesers, or humbugs. Sometimes all three. Plus coffee ice cream.

Coffee. Don't get her parents started on the whole coffee thing, okay? Because no eight year old should drink coffee, much less _that_ much coffee with _that_ much sugar in it. Dear god no.


	4. Discontent

**Discontent**

Discontent Baker Holmes-Watson is an opinionated child. A rather small baby who has turned into a small, slightly round, sandy-haired child, Disco has a stance on everything, even things about which she knows nothing. ("Good lord you are so like your daddy." "I heard that!" "You were supposed to!")

Let's take her nickname, for example. Of course Discontent knows about her own name, don't be foolish, we're talking about her _nickname,_ which originally was Dis because that's just a whole lot easier to say than Discontent every time you want to yell across the flat—"Stop yelling across the flat!" "But you're yelling at me as you tell me to stop yelling!"—but Discontent never much cared for Dis and then one day papa called her Disco and that was the end of that.

Oh, but that's not the point we're trying to make is it? No. What was the point? (Disco spends a lot of time with Rory the skull, how did you know?) Oh, right, the point is that Disco has an opinion on everything and her opinion on her nickname—which daddy at first really did not like—is that it is unique, it is rare—"That's the same thing, my dear." "No it's not!"—and she likes it because no one else has it.

Disco has opinions about other things, of course, including Vex's tarantula at the dinner table, the real reason Uncle My has a brolly all the time, why they have two riding crops at 221B when they don't have even one horse, and when it's really the right time for an eight year old child to go to bed.

Discontent also has opinions about her hair (she keeps it the same length as papa's sandy mop, which means it just barely brushes her collar), her height (she wants to be as tall as daddy but so far that doesn't look promising), and the intelligence outside 221B (there is none, as in none, the world is full of stupid, stupid people frankly and it's a travesty, an honest-to-god travesty) ("Oh lord she is your child. Eight is entirely too young for ennui, Sherlock." "What's ennui papa?" "Look it up Um, don't be lazy and make papa do your thinking for you." "Shut up Dis!" "No, you shut up. Daddy, Um is—" "Girls!")

Anyway, Discontent has every intention of joining the French Foreign Legion, running away to the circus, or becoming a spy for Uncle My. Possibly all three if she has the time.

But actually she might not have the time because what Disco would _really_ like to do is dig up bones and find more skulls that talk. But also she would like to dissect _brains_ so that she can figure out where genius is in all that mush, where love is, where the soul is, and especially where sneezing is because oh yes Disco so does love to sneeze.

Yet whatever you do, for heaven's sake don't ask the child _why,_ because she will answer with a bullet point presentation about the autonomous nervous system and if you don't catch her early, eventually the lecture will veer wildly into disease vectors, infectious aerosols, and health-determinant patterns in a population ("Just say epidemiology Disco, you don't have to use a plethora of capacious words to sound smart." "You do!").

_Anyway,_ the whole point is that Dis thinks. About everything. And she tells daddy and papa and Umbrage and Vexation what she thinks about the things she thinks, even when they maybe don't want to hear it (especially Um, who just wishes they could get through one dinner _once_ without Disco telling her what going on in her own head and _usually_ _getting_ _it_ _wrong_ _you_ _know)._

Disco's big thought recently was to serve Sunday pudding in daddy's Petri dishes because they were sterile—"I doubt that Disco, I so sincerely doubt that. Have you _met_ your daddy?"—and because all the little tea saucers were unwashed in the sink because Vex always has a tarantula in them.

Disco maintains that Um actually _made_ herself have diarrhea the next day as a result because she's mad at Dis.—"Why, honey?" "I don't know, papa. Her name's Umbrage, I guess that's what she's _supposed_ to do."

All the same, Disco brought Um tea and Hob Nobs and said she was really, really sorry.

_And these are the Holmes-Watson girls. In John's head they live, in Sherlock's head they do. Now they're in mine. What with everyone else, including Rory, it's gettin' crowded in here. (If you felt compelled to share a thought about each girl I'd be grateful. So would all the voices in my head.)_


	5. Keep the Home Fires, Uh, Burning

Umbrage took the blame. Vex and Disco let her. They'll always let her.

In feel-good movies the siblings eventually feel contrite and apologize, telling mummy and daddy, "It was us, we did it, we're so sorry."

That's not ever what happens at 221B, not that time they were four and set fire to the telly, and not a dozen years later when something very similar happened only kind of worse.

Both of those times—and all the times in all the years in between—Vexation London Holmes-Watson and Discontent Baker Holmes-Watson let Umbrage Hudson Holmes-Watson _take __the __blame._

There's kind of a reason for that though. Okay, two of them. Actually, ten. Vex and Dis are pretty sure there's ten. Like so:

* Umbrage is, was, and always shall be the family peacemaker. She's a natural diplomat, just like papa, and can usually get everyone to just shut-the-hell up for a minute (honestly their flat is a madhouse most days because we are talking not one, not two, but _five_ big personalities snugged close and tight into seven hundred square feet), and then calm-the-hell down. As such she also tends to be forgiven. Eventually.

* Umbrage is usually the instigator of whatever got the three girls into trouble in the first place, so why not let her take the blame? Seriously. Wouldn't you?

* The reason Umbrage is often the instigator is probably related to that ten. As in IQ points.

Let's back-track for a moment on that one.

Before the girls were born Sherlock forbid tests of any sort on his and John's children. "There will be no IQ tests, no empathy tests, no psychological profiles, I don't even want them subjected to quizzes about their favorite colour if we can avoid it. They will be as consummate or common as they wish and I really don't—"

John had shut his husband up with a hand across his mouth, then kissed the back of his own hand and said, nose-tip-to-nose-tip, "Of course. Yes. I agree. Never. I love you, you big idiot."

So the girls' brains were never tested, quantified, labeled, probed, or measured in any way whatsoever since before the day they were born.

However, super geniuses _will_ find a way and when the girls were four they went ahead and _crafted __their __own __test._

Of course they did. No, seriously, _of __course __they __bloody __well __did._

Four times each took that five hundred and fifty-two question exam and all four times Umbrage came out ten points ahead of her sisters, which is partially why Um gets stuck with the blame for almost everything and why Vex and Dis let her take it.

Which brings us to the year the girls were four and the whole reason for this little missive: explaining why there's no telly at 221B.

You see, the thing is, Vex, Um, and Dis pretty much hate "that Trek thing." Don't even ask the little brainiacs which one because none has a clue that there are not only five separate series—six if you count the short-lived ST: Boldly Go, the one everyone who hated it called Flush—but an ungodly number of movies as well.

_Anyway,_ Um, along with Dis and Vex, hated the program as much as papa loved it and once they finally got daddy to admit he couldn't stand it too (it'll take the girls a good ten years to realize that daddy always sides with papa when possible; it'll take them a few more years than that to realize his solidarity is often rewarded in…rewarding ways).

_Aaaanyway,_ once the girls realized everyone in 221B hated Trek except their poor deluded papa, they thought they would just kill Trek. After some thought they figured out that the best way to do this was by setting the telly on fire the next time the wretched program was on it. Being as they were all of four at the time and being as they are just as um, dumb as their daddy in some pretty astonishing ways, the girls never even _thought_ that burning Trek meant burning, you know, everything else, too. Including reruns of _Worzel __Gummidge_ (which papa loathes), _Secrets __of __the __Dead,_ and _Science __Gone __Wrong._

Because all three girls had a sense papa would not appreciate their plans, they waited to do it when he had one of his infrequent locum jobs and would be out of the flat all day.

Once papa was safely accounted for and daddy was in the kitchen wrapping three human fingers in spider silk—"Why?" "The curator at the museum claims that she—" "No daddy, why can't I have a tarantula?" "Vexation, we talked about this yesterday." "But you never answered the question." "Oh."—the girls fetched one of daddy's Bunsen burners (the blue portable one, not the really pretty glass burner papa got daddy for his birthday), and because daddy had taught them how to use all his lab equipment once they were old enough to wrap fists around a sippy cup, the children of course knew exactly how to fill the burner with butane and use the push-button ignition.

Because it had taken them six minutes longer to initiate Operation Torch Trek than originally planned, and because daddy was wrapping up his experiment early—Vexation brought the tarantula thing up again to distract him (actually, daddy seemed to be weakening on this)—the girls were a little hasty and instead of the mellow, easy-going flame they'd intended on using, they took that little blue burner, shoved it under the telly, and cranked that baby to eleven.

Like so many things at 221B—the sofa, stuffed chairs, kitchen table—the telly is a bit of a relic. A wood-framed relic. A _dry,_ wood-framed relic. A dry, wood-framed surprisingly combustible relic.

That damn thing went up like a parched Christmas tree (which is another story for another time, frankly).

Fortunately John had taught all three girls how to use both the dry powder and the carbon dioxide fire extinguishers, and had gone so far as to buy half-sized versions of each, then seeded the flat with an even dozen. So when the telly sort of burst into flame all three children tackled the blaze with silent, focused aplomb, to the point that daddy didn't even realize what had happened until papa came home (the less said about Discontent's "bright" idea regarding permanently disabling the smoke alarms the better).

After daddy and papa had a really loud argument in the kitchen—"Who smells _smoke,_ as in _acrid __black __smoke__—_did you see the stain on the ceiling?—and doesn't wonder where the stench is coming from?"—and after John and Sherlock took the still lightly smoldering television out of the flat under cover of Mrs. Hudson's Bridge Night, all three girls were properly punished.

Vexation had to give up all twenty pounds she had saved running errands for Mr. Merrick the grocer (just as well, she'd earmarked that for either a tarantula or the rattle snake a boy at school claimed to have for sale), as well as the set of antique skeleton keys Uncle My had given her—"All the information you need for deducing which doors-in-high-places these still open is right here in front of you, dear." "Mycroft, that's a ridiculous thing to tell a child." "Oh really John?"

Umbrage also had to give up her savings—two pounds forty—as well as her ten-book set of _Museums __of __the __World._

Discontent turned out to have sixty-eight pounds tucked away—"You told me you didn't have any money to lend me!" "I didn't! Just because you _want_ the money Vex, doesn't mean you _get_ it!"—all of which she had to forfeit in restitution. She also had to give up her electronic ant farm, which had thrived for nearly a year under her patient care and which perished within a day of confiscation.

So then. Now you know why to this day—three years on—there is no television at 221B Baker Street and, incidentally, why the only Christmas tree they now have is one of those ugly plastic ones that wouldn't burn even if you put the damn thing in the oven and cranked that baby up to eleven.

The girls can tell you _that_ for a fact.

(Psst: This particular Vex, Um, Dis adventure was largely made up by Sherlock one sunny day when he was completely, absolutely, thoroughly dopey with decongestants, a brace of which he'd taken to combat a summer head cold. John's contribution was to provide the voice of reason—"Of course the flat would have fire extinguishers that could fit little-girl hands." "No, Mrs. Hudson usually plays bridge after dinner, so we'd have to take it out at night." "We _killed _her ant farm? Oh Sherlock that sounds so mean." "But they weren't real John." "I know but still…")

_ _For the record I adore original Trek and most all of the movies. Also I totally want this elegant-looking Bunsen burner: hiox 13831-bunsen-burner-day. php. And I don't even have anything to which I want to set fire._ _

_**MORE!** I'm no longer publishing on FFnet as they don't want NC-17 content, so please visit atlinmerrick dot livejournal dot com if you'd like to read more, or Tumblr or Twitter, and eventually everything will be on AO3—please follow!_


	6. Vexation: Power Princess

**Vexation: Power Princess**

She was their power princess.

Because even when gay men rear a fiendishly bright set of little girls, at least one will have a princess period—no, we're not talking about Sherlock. Well, yes, he is something of a princess now that you mention it.

_Anyway._

At 221B Baker Street, Vexation London Holmes-Watson was the _child _going through the phase, the one who wanted tulle and taffeta, a bit of silk, and a string of faux pearls.

It started at Halloween and it would have been lovely if it ended there but it didn't, no it went on for weeks after. Then months. And it didn't stop until winter snow and slush on the streets made it unwise to dash about in red tights and tap shoes. Vexation London Holmes-Watson may be going through a somewhat predictable phase, but not one inch of that wise child is impractical.

So yes, the whole thing began at Halloween, when Vex not only wanted to be a princess, but also Elastigirl and Iron man, Darth Vader and quite possibly the Joker, John was never sure if she just couldn't put the makeup on right or if that gruesome lipstick grin was intentional.

Anyway, Vex _got_ the tulle and the taffeta she craved, because neither her papa or her daddy have figured out a way to say no to a child who can present her arguments with irrefutable logic. And when an eight year old says she wants to be a princess, but proves that her brand of royalty has nothing to do with debilitating delicacy or requiring rescue, and everything to do with flouncing in pretty patent shoes and fine clothes while she vanquishes evil—again, very like her long, lean daddy—well who the hell's going to deny her? In several succinct words: not John Watson-Holmes or Sherlock Holmes-Watson, oh hell no.

So for Halloween, and for months after, Vexation tromped through her busy neighborhood in pale pink shoes and in a yellow, orange, and salmon conglomeration of a dress she'd designed herself (the princess portion of the program), and she held a light saber (Darth Vader) and wore black gloves (Elastigirl), and had so much lipstick on (maybe the Joker maybe not, as has been mentioned) her face qualified as something of an advertisement for L'Oreal or a object lesson depending on who you asked.

However, before she even set foot out 221B's door Vex warmed up for the evening's proceedings by annoying pretty much her entire family by making really, really bad light saber noises (she hasn't even seen Star Wars (Sherlock has, and he hates that movie so hard he can barely breathe)), so anyway John really has no clue how the child absorbed the zeitgeist on this one but she so _very annoyingly did._

Anyway, as we were saying, Vexation was a power princess for Halloween and the neighbors and Mrs. Hudson and the people at the Yard loved it and when the whole family got home—sugary booty in tow—Sherlock beat John to "accidentally" breaking the light saber and though Vex cried she was quickly diverted by the stash of miniature chocolates John had hidden in the left upper most cupboard in the kitchen, and—"Umbrage Hudson Holmes-Watson, you terrible child, did you eat half this bag of chocolates?"

She had, she so very much had the wicked, wicked child. And not only that—

"John."

—they learned a week later—

"John."

—that Umbrage had also—

"John Watson-Holmes stop picking on me." Sherlock crossed his arms and slouched in his straight-backed chair. "On our daughter. I meant stop picking on our fictional _daughter."_

The good doctor Watson put a dash of milk in his piping hot tea and stirred slowly. He tapped the spoon on the side of his bright red porcelain cup (really, John was certain this was his favourite courthouse cafeteria), and then he blinked up at his husband.

"Who is telling this story, Sherlock Holmes-Watson? You said you were bored—and mind you, waiting to be called as a witness is no picnic for me either—and so I said I'd tell you a story. If _you_ would like to tell _me _a story about our mythical children you may. However, this is my story and any resemblance you may find between an extremely naughty pretend little girl and your own terrible self is purely coincidental unless, of course you are feeling guilty, in which case you know what to do."

Sherlock mumbled something.

John raised his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

Sherlock looked off into the busy bowels of the cafeteria and repeated himself at half the previous volume.

"Why? Because they were for _Mrs. Hudson, _you right big ninny. There was a _card_ on the front of the box that said, 'To Mrs. Hudson.' I'd think with that keen eye and sharp intellect you might have realized those chocolates were emphatically _not _for you."

Sherlock slouched lower in his seat, crossed his arms harder, and murmured again.

"Oh I'll give it a rest, and you know what to do to make that happen. If you—"

Sherlock sat up suddenly in his chair, lifted his chin so that everyone around them could see his aggrieved expression. "Fine. _Fine,_ John. Fine. I'll go to Mrs. Hudson's Halloween party and I'll wear that awful dragon costume. And if even one person asks whether you 'light my fire' I'll burn down your village. And by village I'm sure you understand I mean your toast and your tea for the next month."

John barked out a laugh. "Ha! You can't burn tea, Sherlock."

The good detective's wordless reply was a little bit rumbly and more than a little bit diabolical.

_It's been forever since I published a Vexation, Umbrage, and Discontent story, I am sorry about that. I love the little girls John and Sherlock invented and I have a story started for Discontent, and one for Umbrage, so hopefully they'll see the light of day soon…_


End file.
